Previous Seasons

Ludwig van Beethoven and Fritz Kreisler

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3 (1797-98)

Ida Kavafian, violin; Steven Tenenbom, viola; Peter Wiley, cello

Beethoven was deeply conscious of the great composers who came before him, and for a long time he felt reticent about walking in the footprints of Mozart and Haydn by writing a string quartet. Marc and Kerry ponder how this trio feels as if Beethoven is practicing for the real thing, as if he’s writing a quartet for just three instruments by using double stops to create that fourth voice.

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Beethoven’s piano trios are “fiendishly difficult to play” says Marc. In this clip he tells Kerry that this ensemble is more than up to the challenge.

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What do pineapples have to do with Fritz Kreisler’s A Minor String Quartet? Violinist Ida Kavafian shares a behind-the-scenes tale of rehearsing that piece with her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom; their friend and collaborator, cellist Peter Wiley; and Peter’s colleague from the Guarneri String Quartet, the great violinist, Arnold Steinhardt.

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The story goes that Kreisler composed this quartet so he could play it privately with a group of friends that included Eugene Ysaye, Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals. In this interview excerpt, Ida tells Kerry about the joy and virtuosity she finds in Kreisler’s music.

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Arnold Steinhardt loves this piece but in the 45 years he was a member of the Guarneri Quartet, he never got to play it with them. That story came out in High Fidelity, the 1988 documentary about the Guarneris, as Arnold describes here.

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